Sunday, January 29, 2006

During the Georgian energy crisis, life goes on normally with only small differences. When the lights are out, the heart of downtown Tbilisi looks like a village road in the mountains. Friends make plans around when electricity is, and isn't, available. McDonalds can't get its lettuce shipped in, so Big Macs are made with cabbage. Whereas the Parliament building is usually brilliantly lit at night, now the only lighting is this memorial built into the steps, to help people keep from slipping on the smooth marble. And when the heat comes back after an outage, it seems amazing I ever took it for granted.

The burden is not evenly distributed, despite the government's promises to the contrary. In our wealthy neighborhood at the center of town, we hardly ever have outages of more than a few hours. In other neighborhoods, there is only gas and electricity for a part of each day. And there are reports that in some of Georgia's smaller towns, gas and electricity have been cut off completely.